Aircraft manufacturers are constantly striving to increase comfort and provide more pleasurable flight experience for their passengers. Over the years, many innovations have been introduced in the aircraft cabin in order to provide more comfort to passengers. But even considering these developments, the main interface between the exterior of the aircraft and the passenger are the windows. Through the windows, the passenger can see if it is daytime or night and often, the earth below the aircraft. Some passengers love to look out the window and watch the amazing patterns on the earth far below. Checkerboard mosaics of cultivated farmland give way to austere desert rock formations, breathtaking snow-covered mountainous peaks and fractally-intricate shorelines.
Although looking out a side porthole window can be fun and informative, the passengers looking out the porthole window typically do not have a panoramic view of the horizon similar to what the pilots see through their panoramic cockpit windshield. Seeing where the plane is going, what is ahead and the blue yonder before and above the airplane can be exciting and comforting to passengers.
Previous work has been done in the past. One prior approach provides a flight portal apparatus for displaying a virtual view of a surface of the earth below an aircraft. This allows the passenger to see a virtual view of the surface of the earth below an aircraft, but does not show a panoramic view such as the view that the pilots have. Additionally, some aircraft make use of the same video displays used to show movies to passengers to provide additional virtual imagery concerning the flight. For example, many aircraft can display a map showing the airplane's current position. Some aircraft are also able to display a view of the runway during landing. Once again however, such video screen views create neither the appearance nor the impression of being able to view a panorama of the sky similar to what the pilots in the cockpit can see.
Another proposed approach uses a different aircraft configuration in order to provide a passenger cabin which, at the front of the fuselage, has a pointed portion extending above the cockpit and at a level of which the fuselage is provided with a row of real windows forming a panoramic window wall. This is an interesting solution but probably could be implemented only in a large airplane. It also does not have the facilities of a virtual window in terms of implementation constraints.
Yet another approach presents an aircraft having a raised and rearward positioned cockpit; a passenger compartment positioned in a forward end of the main aircraft body; a real passenger window which extends across the forward end of the main aircraft body for forward viewing by passengers positioned in the passenger compartment. Once again, this solution has several implementation difficulties by proposing a raised and rearward positioned cockpit.
It would be desirable to give passengers the impression of being able to look out of a “picture window” or panoramic cockpit windshield at the horizon and the sky above and before the airplane without having to modify the airplane fuselage to cut openings and without needing to comprise safety and other concerns that might be implicated by providing additional exterior windows in the aircraft fuselage.
An example non-limiting technology herein creates an environment in which the passenger has the same emotion, feel and visual experience that a pilot has with regard to freedom of flight and proximity to the exterior of the aircraft and where passengers have the impression that they are looking out of a real panoramic window. The creation of such environment is accomplished through a “virtual window” according to an example non-limiting embodiment. To comprise the internal and the external aspects of a real window, an example non-limiting virtual window according to the example non-limiting embodiment has two main parts: an internal part and an external part. The internal part can comprise a folded or flexible high resolution color display that conforms to the internal profile of the aircraft fuselage as if it were an actual window. The external part comprises a paint or decal scheme that is indistinguishable from an actual window and which is placed on the outside of the aircraft fuselage in registry with the conformal display in the aircraft's interior. Thus, passengers looking at the exterior of the aircraft are led to believe that a window exists at that location in the aircraft, and once they get inside the aircraft the passengers see images on the flexible conformal display that are precisely the same as or at least consistent with what they would see if an actual window were present at that location in the aircraft. The passenger thus has the illusion of looking through a real panoramic window in the aircraft fuselage.
Some advantages of the example non-limiting embodiment include:                the example non-limiting embodiment provides a different passenger flight experience;        the example non-limiting embodiment provides a panoramic view (similar to the pilots' view) during the flight through the use of existing technologies (Flexible organic light emitting diode screen display or “FOLED”, for example) in a virtual window and eliminating the need of a real window for this purpose (e.g., of providing a panoramic view);        From the point of view of external appearance of the airplane, with the example non-limiting embodiment the aircraft becomes differentiated through the external representation of the virtual window, with a low cost of implementation, through a paint scheme;        the example non-limiting embodiment provides a solution that does not impact the position of the cockpit and does not increase the wet area of the aircraft.        
An example non-limiting embodiment comprises:                means of capturing the external images (for example, a camera system) connected to a data processing system;        said data processing system located in internal side of the aircraft and connected to the internal flexible display which shows the external images; and        an user interface connected to the data processing system.        